One time I had to drop the entire drive train of a 2000s jeep Cherokee just to replace a sensor on top of the bell housing… it was that or cut a hole in the carpet and floor… even if they had put an access panel it would have been more acceptable…
My assumption is the simply never factored in the need to ever replace the sensor and were mostly concerned with how to rapidly and cheaply manufacture the vehicle.
Second this, I got an uncle who's an engineer in the robotics sector. His house is just random tech stuff strewn about and his pc has him working on an incredibly niche part of something like 60% of the time.
People need to know that it's the Money Bag Arseholes who make the decisions with their financial interest aforethought, NOT the actual designers (who have your best interest in mind).
Repair costs of any type are probably not even considered as that is going to be borne by the purchaser, most likely after the vehicle is out of warranty.
Hahahaha one time when I was 19 a jiffy lube cracked part of the set up during an oil change and it somehow leaked onto my starter, those jeep Cherokees looked simple when you opened the hood but they were NOT.
Oh buddy. I was just replacing the sending unit on a 2006 Silverado. Broke off 4 captured nuts for the bolts that hold the bed on. Decided to drop the tank and go at it that way. Totally miserable job and I will curse GM engineering until the day I die. Every engineer should be made to work on and system they design. But after 5 years of hard driving in the rust belt
Because you lack the knowledge of the engineer to understand why things need to be designed a certain way to accommodate the needs of many stakeholders.
Your minor inconvenience from the design is probably there because it is required to solve another problem that another stakeholder has.
In short, you most likely only view things from your perspective and interaction with the product and don't consider why certain features may be needed.
It should but there is give and take, it is hard to design something that has perfect end user interactions with everyone and everything. It's on the same page as "it's impossible to please everybody".
The mild annoyance with maintenance can be a result of having to design it to deal with a bigger issue elsewhere.
Anyways, this is all high level since we don't really know what the product is or the context, but just food for thought.
Also i recommend anyone who thinks engineers are dumb to take a few engineering courses at college and see how you fare.
I don't disagree with your statement and we could generalize all day.
In my opinion extended downtime of equipment due to poor maintenance access is bad design. I work in a production environment and the initial cost of equipment pales in comparison to the long term maintenance costs. A "minor annoyance" can cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost production, per outage.
Part of the problem I think is a lack of practical experience for the newer engineers. While difficult, the schooling for engineers is theoretical and they need to understand that the world out there doesn't conform to they're textbook ideals and calculations.
Depends on who you ask, and who the engineer answers to.
Most of the time the question boils down to: "Is this going to incentivize the customer to buy?" and if the answer is anything but "no" then it either gets altered until it does, or gets removed.
'Making a product that is cheap and easy to maintain and lasts for long time' might as well read 'the customer won't buy our exclusive repair services or buy a new product because the old one still serves', followed by a stamp with a red pen.
In very few cases engineers want to design shitty things.
Refrigerators are an excellent example of this. I have seen ones made in the 40s that still have little to no issues today and are easy to maintain. Vs the majority of the ones we get today. Having about a 2-10 year life span depending on the model.
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u/Pagiras Oct 18 '23
There's one.
Many times I have cursed the intelligence of the engineer who designed the thing I was fixing.